practice and | ALERTA

personal practice.

nationhood & commemoration

During the exploration of my personal methodology and practice, I focused in three main elements that would be the foundation to shape of the performance. These three aspects are: nationhood (or 'culturehood', as I would prefer to refer to it), documentary theatre (in this case, specifically verbatim) and language. The (creative) self is in the middle, as I believe the people involved in the creative space should transit personally through these three aspects as well.

In the first place, nationhood and commemoration respond to my focus in the personal interest of making politically-based performances. In this sense, 'commemoration refers to the relationship between the past and the present, relying on symbols of ritual and relationality to reassert certain value systems within the social fabric' (Fernandes, Haughton, Verstraete, 2023, p.1)

documentary theatre
(verbatim)

nationhood / commemoration

(creative) self

language and intraculturality

I believe to represent and perform nationhood (and, as part of a wider cultural community as 'Latinxs's –how Latin American people are conceptualised in English-speaking countries – culturehood) is an act of exposure and globalisation that expands the concentration of north-hemisphere oriented narratives usually shown in the theatre landscape. To commemorate through theatre, for both creatives involved and audiences, can have more than a 'building community' objective. In fact,

'a commemoration or commemorative theatre event might aim to give account of the past, create community through narrating the past, exclude outsiders by delimiting the past, inform outsiders of their exclusion, redefine inclusion by retelling the past, complicate a received narrative, simplify a received narrative, challenge power, solidify power, make restitution, demand restitution, call for restorative justice, debase or ignore calls for restorative justice, celebrate privilege, challenge privilege, counter dominance, maintain dominance, realize social change, uphold social norms and work for/against racial, gender, ethnic and/or class justice' (Schneider, 2023, p.xv).

documentary theatre.

If we intrinsically connect nationhood with documentary theatre, we can create a realistic space to transmit one's history, cultural background and self. In regards to documentary theatre, 'all history is theatrical, after all – at the very least because the telling of historical tales takes place in time out of joint (one time in another time) (Schneider, 2023, p. xv). To create Alerta, I decided to use verbatim theatre of my original 5 interviews as my main form for writing the script. My objective, as mentioned before, was to represent this moment as truthful as it was in its reality; culturally and historically accurate. In the end, that's what documentary theatre is – 'staging real people, real words, real places – to connect their audiences with that reality' (Stephenson, 2019, p. 3).

Using verbatim theatre was not my original intention when writing the script. The aim of interviewing acquaintances had a research purpose to build a better timeline of events, but some testimonies were so interesting and fundamental for the development of the whole story that I could not help but create characters out of them. This was also supported by objective of transmitting this story as truthful as possible, 'verbatim performance is a truth-based genre' [,w]here autobiographical performance establishes its contract to rality and truth in the self-storying body of the actor-subject, bonding the narrative self to visceral presence. [In that way,] verbatim sheds the body, concentrating truth-value in the testimony of the oridinary, but now absent, subject'. (Stephenson, 2019, p. 91) Certain characters lines are word-for-word from the interviews I conducted. These words authentically described their presence and experiences inside the occupation, and expressed thoughts about other people that were inside the occupation too. So while some these specific words were used as part of the script, others were avoided to contextualize the new characters in the performance as well. In that same sense, Stephenson (2019) argues that 'as testimony is displaced from its initial witnessing situation, it becomes vulnerable to adaptation' (p.91), which, approaching this story five years after it happened, is something to definitely take into consideration . Nevertheless, as these words were also 'shaped for performance, the captured speech [was] edited, condensed, and parcelled out' (p. 92).

I believe telling delicate stories like Alerta's, need a sensitive approach and a script that gives justice to the fragilities that happened those three days. To be able to achieve this, a verbatim approach assisted the gap between what happened and how I intend to retell this story. In that same sense, Clas Zilliacus, who describes the burgeoning of documentary methodologies in Germany during the 60's in relation to specific cultural moment, suggests that 'the situation demanded extreme sobriety in language and watchfulness against the semantic dislocations of the Nazi era, and the recent past was heavy with themes that could neither be bypassed nor fictionalized' (Claycomb, 2023, p. 13).

language and intraculturality.

One of the successes of the process and realisation of Alerta was that is was made up of an entirely Latin American cast and creative team. During the week of tablework, we realised how easy it was to comprehend deeply the social codes, society worldviews and common issues we all shared due to our backgrounds.

With this common cultural ground, there were things that didn't need to be explained in several moments for the actors. However we all realised that our biggest challenge would be able to develop a story that could, likewise, be understood by a London-based audience. This question rose after our first script reading, when one of the actors wasn't able to attend the session and another actor, with a British background, came in to read for her. As we were just reading a draft of the play, and wanted to make the space as open as possible, I asked everybody to give me their notes and also discuss what we had just read. After an interesting conversation, the understudy reader said she thought one of the characters needed a backstory to explain why she was so passionate and desperate to make abortion legal: had she had an illegal abortion before? Did she personally face the consequences of abortion being ilegal?

When she had this thought, there was a silence where everybody thought about what she had said. Then another actor just raised her hand and said she disagreed with her, and gave a long speech about how it is when you are born and raised in Latin America, with the chain of injustices, bad health systems, education, corruption, pensions, etc., we carry a sort of ground rage that doesn't need a personal story to justify it. There is a foundational anger because the whole system is wrong and nothing really works, so demanding legal abortion didn't need an explanation. For me it was very interesting to witness this situation, as the rest of the cast agreed with her and I understood why I had not written/thought a backstory for her emotional distress in the first place. That's what I have observed my whole life, that's the world-view I am also characterising my play with.

There is a very deep connection that language-focused practices and intracultural theatre practices can share. As a multicultural space of creation (because, even though we were all Latin American, we almost all came from different cultural backgrounds) it was very natural to set an intracultural approach to work with. As Landon-Smith (2016) states in 'Towards and Intracultural Actor Training', the methodology of an Intracultural Theatre Practice 'has three main components:

1- Setting the culture of the rehearsal room

2-Placing the actor at the centre

3-A multi-lingual, multi-vernacular approach' (p. 30)

As we all came from similar cultural contexts, the first component developed in a very natural way in the rehearsal room. However, there was still plenty of space to explore every actors potential following my research in linguistic studies and Kristine Landon Smith's Intracultural Theatre Practices.

In regards to placing the actor at the centre, Landon-Smith (2016) mentions the need to 'help the actor hold their sense of themselves as they move from actor to character in a play by emphasizing the need to continue to play through themselves' (p.33) and, concerning a multi-lingual and multi-vernacular practice, she encourages to 'navigate the actor's journey in the use of language and culture as part of the process [and] explore with first languages and vernaculars, helping actors to understand that the use of language and personal vernaculars can act as a tool to discover artistic freedom and confidence' (p.34).

There were ten actors, 8 of them who's first language was Spanish (three of them who had moved to the UK more than 10 years ago), 1 who spoke Portuguese (Brasil) and 1 who was born and raised in the UK and who's father was from Nicaragua (so she could understand Spanish but not speak it). From the first time we met, actors were encouraged to speak in the language that came most natural to them to express themselves in the room, this being Spanish, English or Portuguese if that was easier to navigate a thought for them. Based on past research, I found that 'the second language fulfills an intellectual function and is relatively devoid of emotion, whereas the first language clearly expresses emotions' (Marcos, 1976, in Eilers González, 2023). This was an interesting starting point to observe my actors and their language choices to navigate different things: from the initial check-in we did on rehearsals, small talk in breaks, script analysis or research-guided conversations. Most times when the input of the question or prior word (when following an order to talk) was made in English/Spanish, they would continue in that language. Sometimes they realised they needed to 'feel more free' to express themselves and would say explicitly in the language they would express themselves in ('Sorry, I will say this in [language different that the one that came before]').

The code-switch and language choice that every actor had was also a portrayal of the language exposure they had been in the last years. I came to realise that the one's that expressed themselves in English more (not taking into account those who had been raised here) were the ones who had meaningful, long and close relationships with an English-speaking person. In regards to that, 'there are authors that have advanced the "emotional contexts of learning hypothesis", arguing that language emotionality is independent of age of onset acquisition, but linked to the emotional context in which the language was acquired and used' (Dewaele, 2013, p.5).

Another way in which a multi-lingual rehearsing room can be approached is to achieve the emotional state you aim your actors to be in. In accordance with earlier findings, code-switching and billigualism could be used in trauma therapy, as the patient could choose the language they needed to manage the emotional content they were communicating (Eilers González, 2023). In that same sense, if the use of a certain language could create certain distance, especially in an emotionally intense play and as Alerta, it could help me as a director to regulate the emotional environment we were creating in the room. As memories and responses are language-dependent- e.g.e, when one encode's an experience in a specific language, you will remember in that same language ; when you are asked something in a certain language, you will probably reply in that same language (Eilers González, 2023)- there were several times I consciously decided to speak English or Spanish depending in what I needed specifically from my actors. An example of this can be found here.

In conclusion, there are several aspects around language and bilingualism that can be explored in a rehearsal room, especially when creating emotionally-driven performances or if a Stanislavskian emotional memory approach wants to be used.